Tricked for a treat

Halloween night, the meteorologist on the late-night local news said the weather had been perfect for trick-or-treating.

I so beg to differ.

It was 81 degrees when we left the house. Eighty-one degrees at 5:30 p.m. at the end of October! Where I come from, costumes were always layered with long underwear and winter coats. It just doesn’t feel the same if you’re not collecting candy with gloves.

But I’ve been in the south for nearly 12 years, so you’d think I would know by now that summers are hot and winters are mild. Yet that hasn’t stopped me from buying furry, hooded plush outfits for Ladybug.

When we learned Ladybug was going to be born in the middle of February, I bought a furry, hooded plush Winnie the Pooh zip-up one-piece for her to wear home from the hospital. I got matching pink booties and mittens too. But the day we checked out, the temperature was 84 degrees. Ladybug ended up wearing a short-sleeved onesie home, and the Winnie the Pooh outfit got tucked in a drawer, never to be worn.

Then earlier this fall, we stumbled across a furry, hooded plush ladybug Halloween costume. I couldn’t let that one go, despite the nagging voice in the back of my mind that said it probably wouldn’t get cool enough for it. Surely Mother Nature wouldn’t be so cruel twice, I tried to convince myself as we stood at the cash register.

But as the thermometer climbed in the days leading up to Halloween, I accepted the fact that I had been duped again. When we finally did go trick-or-treating, Ladybug’s hood was down, her sleeves were pushed up and her cheeks were flushed. Before long, we ended up taking off her costume altogether.

That ladybug costume is now sitting on a shelf in her nursery, waiting for the day it gets cold enough to wear a coat. Ladybug may not have one of those, but she has a furry, hooded plush outfit that will stand in just fine.

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